The coin that we have lost was our most precious posession, what completed us and made us content…
We search everywhere to find it again, but it turns out that it was always in our own pocket.
Lost Coin Zen is an international organization with groups in America and Europe, founded and led by Daniel Doen Silberberg Roshi, and represented in Oslo by Vegar Svanemyr. Our practice as we’ve inherited it from Maezumi Roshi combines both Soto and Rinzai Zen, and extends back to samurai-era Japan and to the old Ch’an masters of China. Through Doen Roshi’s extensive studies we also include teachings from Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way work, sufism and Native American shamanism.
Vegar Svanemyr
Vegar represents Lost Coin Zen in Norway and in Europe. He has studied zen formally for more than 20 years, first under Genpo Roshi then under Doen Roshi. He has worked in different care professions, with web development and streaming services for different political and religious organisations, and after more than two decades in the U.S. he has recently moved back to Norway again. He spends his time writing, exercising, practicing martial arts, and on developing a Norwegian and European branch of Lost Coin Zen. He lives in Oslo, Norway with his daughter Isa.
Daniel Doen Silberberg Roshi
Doen Roshi is the founder and director of Lost Coin Zen. He has been practicing for almost 60 years, first as a student and teacher in Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way work, and later as a student under Taizan Maezumi Roshi and John Daido Loori Roshi, whom he helped found Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, N.Y. He has a B.A. in English literature, a Ph.D. in psychology and has had careers both as a psychologist and a jazz musician. He lives in San Francisco, California with his wife Caryn.
Hakuyun Taizan Maezumi Roshi
Maezumi, Roshi (1931-1995), came to the U.S. in 1956, where he founded the Zen Center of Los Angeles (ZCLA) and contributed enormously to the establishment of growth of Zen Buddhism in the United States and Europe. He received Dharma transmission from Hakujun Kuroda Roshi in 1955, and also approval as a teacher from Koryu Osaka Roshi and Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, and so was Dharma successor in three lines of Zen. He himself gave the dharma transmission to twelve of his own students, and the umbrella organisation White Plum Asanga which includes all of his successors and their students and successors again, now has more than 200 zen teachers and many thousands of students all over the world.